***edited to add: my laptop keyboard has been stuck on certain letters for ages now. T is a big one, it won't type a LOT. I try to be mindful about this and push it really hard, so sometimes it doubles, but other times I'm typing too fast to notice and I miss the letter entirely. here are three or four letters that do this, thus there have been a LOT of typos in my blog oveer the last year or so. Consider this my author's note that is longhand for "I am not fixing it, but here's why there are so many typos for the last several months"***
Allen sent me a chat yesterday about this total douche canoe that used to be on the webzine where Allen and I met. We laughed about the song he was referencing, I found the youtube video, we chuckled together, and then I got a massive urge to look through our old zine to read discussions and see our pieces and just like...view who we used to be.
It was a wild ride. Keeping in mind this was 20 years ago, and if you aren't in a totally different headspace from where you were 20 years ago, I personally believe you're doing something wrong, I expected to cringe a bit at myself. And initially I was cringing at myself in a good natured way. Like, oh isn' funny how arrogant and shitty I was at 20? Isn't it funny to look back at myself with a wiser lens and be able to cluck softly and be like...oh girl, you are going to learn so much in the next two decades. Some of it I was like, a little sad that I was so mean spirited and how much of that cruelty wasn't funny like I thought it was at the time. I've done a lot of cruel things in my life, and said a lot of cruel things, that I did because I have always been a small person. I am deeply insecure, and the easiest way for someone in that position to feel better about themselves is to drag everyone else that seems more confident down into the mud pit where they're currently living. I have been guilty of doing that for the bulk of my life, and I only caught on to how much I did that maybe eight or nine years ago, with the last few years being involved in actively disengaging from the behavior. I also saw myself wanting to fit in with people so desperately that I made myself more like the people I wanted to fit in with, but perhaps I swung the pendulum harder. Maybe I need to give myself grace here, I don't know, but I do know after hours of looking back at a snapshot of why I was, I was a mix of grossed out, and pleased with my growth.
And then I saw a discussion post that I read and reread about a dozen times that perfectly encapsulates just how fucked up and racist and shitty I have been.
Now, it is not to make myself out as an excellent ally that I am very frank about knowing that I am a racist person. I cannot help it, I was raised in a racist society, and I spent a lot of my formative years in an area where it wasn't even subtle racism, it was deep south kind of racism. While I work hard at being an anti-racist now, it is not up to me to determine how far along I am in that journey, so when anybody asks me if I'm racist, it is my obligation to report that I am. It is not a moniker I wear proudly, but I do think white people, especially white women, owe that honesty to themselves and everyone else. I preface this way because I want it to be clear that I am super aware of who I was, and what I believed, when I started my anti-racism journey. I am honest about it, and I know there are versions of me in that mindset out there. I know I wrote about Korryn Gaines as if her death at the hands of police wasn't racially motivated. I know I was in the all lives matter camp almost a decade ago. I know I leeaned in to white privilege and was pretty fucking glib about it and I thought that made me a good ally, just naming it while still utilizing it. I know I was guilty of white saviorism at the start of my journey, and I probably began my anti-racism journey as a means of bolstering myself rather than wanting to work toward equity and the destruction of oppressive social structures. I've been just about every iteration of white feminist there is. I know this about myself, I am not proud of it but I own because if I don't, I will slip so easily back into that mindset, because white comfort is fucking insanely potent.
There was a discsussion board where a Black contributor was talking about her life experiences and how she interpreted a piece written by a white dude, and she told him that he couldn't possibly understand how any racialized person would see his piece because he's a white dude. He doesn't know any better. Their discussion went on for quite some time, and then I stepped in and defended half of what he said to her. And she used that as an attempt to call me and and show me my weak spots, which was more grace than I deserved, and more taxing for her than I can know, I must assume. We didn't argue, but only because I have to imagine a lifetime of trying to defend herself against whiteness informed her that arguing with me was futile, but I certainly argued AT her. She ended with telling me that my experience was extremely limited, but she didn't think I was a bad person. Just white. I threwin everything in the white defensiveness paybook at her. "No YOU'RE the racist, actually!" and "here's the racism I experienced growing up in a community where there weren't a lot of white people!" and "You don't know anything about me or my experiences!" and "We may come from the same town, but you are super wrong about racism being present there!" and "if you feel inferior to white people, then I feel bad for you and that is a problem with the way you were raised, not a reflection of reality!" I just word vomited every predictable thing at this girl who was just trying to explain to a bunch of white people she already knew weren't going to listen (that is an assumption on my part, perhaps she held out hope that one of us would see her and appreciate the difference in our lived experiences, I am just drawing conclusions basd on the information I've been given from friends about how talking to white people about Blackness and anti-Blackness tends to go) why a certain article on the zine was tone deaf.
It isn't exactly like I'm embarrassed by this, I have made no secret about where I came from to get where I am now. What I was was...shocked, I guess, just not in the way where I was like, "I can't believe I was like that!" I know I was like that, I'm not shocked at that. I think what I'm shocked about is actually SEEING it. There's a stark difference between conceptualizing who you were as this nebulous kind of...like...blob of ignorance that you can speak about and be like, oh her? Yeah, she had a lot of learning to do! but you don't actually see the wound, and then...you know. Seeing the fucking wound for what it really and truly was, not what you've idealized it to be. Because...maybe it's just me doing this...but I have to hazard a guess that when we think of where we've come from and how far we've come and how much we've grown, we still idealize our befores. We never want to think of ourselves as truly THAT BAD, even if we acknowledge that we were. I think that most of us, if not all of us, view even the darkest parts of our past selves through rose colored glasses. Really taking a long, hard look at who you were, and acknolwedging the very real things you've said to people that have consequences outside of your scope of understanding is different than being like, I know I said stuff into the ether that was awful, and I know I held beliefs that were rooted in ignorance and willful refusal to engage in conversation about how I as a white person could be wrong about what whiteness really and truly does, but I guess it's been part of a comfort I didn't know I was engaging in to be able to keep that shit nebulous and tidied up.
When I was talking to Derek about this, he asked me if I was going to track her down and talk to her about it, perhaps say sorry for being ignorant. I told him no, I didn't think that was approrpiate, because I can not suss out if the apology was self-serving, and from where I am right now, I am pretty sure the only person the apology would do anything for is me. Though I am not at a point where I feel like I should apologize, despite understanding that the things I said were harmful. I cannot make the call that an apology is not necessary, there is every possibility she thinks one is, and she's felt slighted for years, though I doubt it. Again not to underplay what I said, but because I bet it was just another Wednesday for her, and I was just another white girl, and that version of me being a dumb racist white girl is as nebulous to her as that version of me being a dumb racist white girl was to me two days ago, because...like...ALL of us are me in that conversation all the time. Am I regretful of who I was and how that impacted her? Yup. But would an apology for something like this be anything other than unburdening that regret and passing its torch onto someone else and burdening her with the decision to forgive me or not? Only she can say.
I am always grateful for opportunities to see how much more space I have to grow and learn and change, because I think the second I get comfortable or complacent in where I'm at, I will slip right back into defensive whiteness. This made me keenly aware of how...in that moment, I felt so sure I was right to call her out the way I did. That it truly WAS her being racist, not me being racist. I stood firm in my convinction, and when other people in the thread jumped to defend me against her, I bet I was properly pleased and even more convinced of how correct and above being racist I was. I worry that I still fall into that trap, though I am not looking for congratulatory defense from anybody when I engage in conversations about racism, because that centers me, and I am not the important person in those conversations. I never have been.
I guess I'm just hoping that I have learned enough in the last twenty years that I would be upsetting to that version of me twenty years ago, because you guys the race card is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO tired. And I hope that in another twenty years, if confronted with the things I did not yet know and was not yet aware of because how could I be until someone extends a call in to me, I do not shy from looking away at yet another starting point.
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